TY  - JOUR
A1  - Younossi, Zobair M.
A1  - Stepanova, Maria
A1  - Esteban, Rafael
A1  - Jacobson, Ira
A1  - Zeuzem, Stefan
A1  - Sulkowski, Mark
A1  - Henry, Linda
A1  - Nader, Fatema
A1  - Cable, Rebecca
A1  - Afendy, Mariam
A1  - Hunt, Sharon
T1  - Superiority of interferon-free regimens for chronic Hepatitis C : the effect on health-related quality of life and work productivity
T2  - Medicine
N2  - Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) such as quality of life and work productivity are important for measuring patient's experience. We assessed PROs during and after treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients.Data were obtained from a phase 3 open label study of sofosbuvir and ribavirin (SOF + RBV) with and without interferon (IFN). Patients completed 4 PRO assessment instruments (SF-36, Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue, Chronic Liver Disease Questionnaire- HCV, Work Productivity and Activity-Specific Health Problem) before, during, and after treatment.A total of 533 patients with chronic HCV were enrolled; 28.9% treatment-naïve, 23.1% cirrhotic, 219 received IFN + SOF + RBV and 314 received IFN-free SOF + RBV. At baseline, there were no differences in PROs between the IFN-free and IFN-containing treatment arms (all P > 0.05). During treatment, patients receiving IFN + SOF + RBV had a substantial impairment in their PROs (up to -24.4% by treatment week 12, up to -8.3% at week 4 post-treatment). The PRO decrements seen in the SOF + RBV arm were smaller in magnitude (up to -7.1% by treatment week 12), and all returned to baseline or improved by post-treatment week 4. By 12 weeks after treatment cessation, patients who achieved sustained viral response-12 showed some improvement of PRO scores regardless of the regimen (up to +7.1%, P < 0.0001) or previous treatment experience. In multivariate analysis, the use of IFN was independently associated with lower PROs.IFN-based regimens have a profoundly negative impact to PROs. By contrast, the impact of RBV on these PROs is relatively modest. Achieving HCV cure is associated with improvement of most of the PRO scores.
KW  - direct-acting antivirals
KW  - fatigue
KW  - work productivity
Y1  - 2017
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/42817
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-428170
SN  - 1536-5964
SN  - 0025-7974
N1  - Copyright © 2017 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CCBY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 96
IS  - 7, e5914
SP  - 1
EP  - 6
PB  - Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
CY  - Baltimore, Md.
ER  -